City Facebook Page

Ah, I'm also a little stuck with this as well. Since I'm the first CIR in my town my soup and KACHOU thought it'd be cool to have me run a Facebook (I also have an Instagram for it) for foreign students and residents.

But I don't often know what events are going on that I can post about, or the events I do go to aren't technically in my town (so far I've posted about them anyway because then I can explain/reassure people that it's easy to get to other interesting places from my town). There's another page in the town that posts almost exclusively in Japanese but sometimes with English that has 16k followers and we asked them to promote my page (after refusing their attempt to recruit me for their page) but it hasn't helped get much more exposure. They seem to know more about events, but like you I don't want to feel like I'm copying off them or just translating their posts into English (plus the events they go to, I generally am not going to so I have none of my own photos to post)

Also my soup recently told me I might not be able to do restaurant reviews or tag shops etc. in my posts because it counts as advertising, which would make it look like the city hall was being paid to advertise those places even though it isn't. But reviewing restaurants and showing good places to go shopping was one of the main things I wanted to do since it can sometimes be hard for foreigners to decide where to go to eat if they don't know which places have English menus etc. (I've been given tips to get around all this but I haven't tried implementing them yet).

So yeah...sorry I can't give much advice, but just wanted to let you know you're not alone in this, so お互いに頑張りましょうね～ ^^;;

𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒽𝒾𝓂𝑒 Firstly, I'm glad to hear that it's not just me, haha.



I would also love to do more restaurant-type stuff but I'm running into the same issue. Also, most English/foreign language speaker-inclusive events are private or run by groups (sometimes businesses) so I can't promote those events either...

Dee Thank you for the advice! I'm actually decently knowledgable about the trash situation--because one of my first jobs was translating a 1700+ term garbage list (which will be made into an app in March). I'll also ask my soup about posting more cutural difference stuff.

Hello!

I'm a CIR with no Pred and started posting on my city's Twitter account when I arrived in August.

I just got approved to make my own English facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts showcasing my city, this month. I've been trying to post to those about everyday and also post continue posting to my city's Twitter account each day...which turns into posting to 4 accounts each day (5 if you include the fact that someone else in the city hall puts all my city hall Twitter tweets onto the Facebook page as well.)

About running out of content: I was told to post everyday but there have been times I have run out of content too. I would check if your section has a shared photo file or drive of places in your city. Then you can try using those types of photos along with any info you can get online, in pamphlets or from your coworkers about the places?

I've also had the support of my soup in asking all my coworkers to take me along when they have to go outside to somewhere interesting for work, so I can come and take photos that I can use for content. (Which also helped because I only got my own car this weekend, which is absolutely necessary for getting around here.) I would try suggesting that to your soup, and confide in them that you don't have enough content.

Also, I think it should be fine to post the same content more than once, such as re-showcasing something your pred already did, or the same event another page posted about. Then more people can learn about it, right? Also if you're allowed to reposting/reblogging could be another idea.

On only promoting your own city: I'd also try asking if it's okay to promote the cities around yours too or collab with them, or nearby CIRs. I'd assume your city also collaborates with the cities around yours too right.

As for promoting businesses: this is a little awkward but one thing my tourism section does in pamphlets is putting in photos of dishes etc. to broadcast that "Our city is famous for this! You can eat this here in many places!" without actually listing the names of restaurants etc. Again though, I would confide your coworkers or boss about this. I managed to get a little more liniancy in the SNS accounts I run, as a "CIR" rather than the more strict rules for the city hall pages.

Promoting accounts/getting more followers: for paid promotion Facebook has a post-boosting option. The CIRs in the city next to mine used this and it helped them increase their city's page followers and the post likes by a lot. Some CIRs also use television programs to promote their pages.

When I was planning to make my own SNS accounts for the city I went through the CIR database and made a list of several CIR-ran FB pages I found.
I'll paste that down here for reference:

I ran a town-level tourism Facebook page. I did post daily and used the schedule feature to post things in advance, so when I was busy there would still be content.

For when I didn't have content I would link to JapanTravel articles, or share popular posts from our prefecture's official page, pages from nearby cities, etc. Sharing things from popular related pages is a good idea especially if it gets them to notice you and share your content with a bigger audience! I would scour the net for mentions of our fair town, etc. to fill in the blanks. I also encouraged ALTs and page fans to send us pictures we could post as "photo of the month." I did throwback Thursdays with old B&W archival photos of the town we had around. I did an "unseen TOWN" series every week with a shot I had taken in a less famous place. Then we did Omotensashi TOWN posts to highlight any local businesses who worked with us to translate menus, make an English webpage, train staff, etc. to get ready for foreign customers. For events I would think of a an arc starting with a teaser save the date, then details, then reminders, then (if someone went) pictures of how the event went. Reposting popular old posts is also a good idea. I found it helpful to have these weekly "theme post" days to fill out the schedule and the page followers liked it too.

Thank you everyone for your advice and replies!

If anything, I definitely feel less disheartened now--as others are experincing the same issues as me ^^;;
I'm also grateful for all the topic and approach advice that was shared


leinyann 頑張りましょうね ^^

Leita I like that idea about looking for a photo drive. It sounds like a good source of information. I'd love to get out more too, so I'll have to see if people will take me along places.

🎄🌰🌰Yoosting on an open 🔥🎄 I actually tried to post something about a historic landmark here yesterday (that doesn't have a lot of data online), and they told me to push it off because it will take a lot of work to research, etc. (I guess they didn't like my draft? ^^; ) I also hadn't thought to ask about collaborations... Hmm...

marudate Creating a routine or some sort of general plan would probably be helpful--at least for my sanity, haha. My city is pretty strict about what sources we can use and such. I once tried to post about the prefectual mascot and they were like, well you can do that but we have to ask A and B and C for permission to do/use/say this (meaning that it might be too much of a hassel to do) so I'm not sure about how they'd feel about reposting articles from other sources, but I'll definitely be sure to ask!

More general advice: I suggest doing basic data analysis on your page and others every month and sending that around via 回覧. If they care about the page being effective it might help them get out of the 行政 risk-avoidance mindset. We did period analyses of my tourism English page vs the town general Japanese page. They are different audiences and while I can't compete with parents clicking like on undokai pictures, I beat them in a bunch of categories.

Facebook Insights have a wealth of interesting data. On a month/month basis you can show increase in fans, but more importantly reach (who sees it) and engagement (who likes and shares it). Just having a lot of fans is meaningless- most of them will never see your posts as Facebook prioritizes the user experience first and paid advertisers second. Maybe show the top 3 posts/month as well. That will show what kind of content is popular with the page's fans. Insights also let you compare your page against peer pages, especially those that are well run. I found that really helpful. In Tohoku, one of the best pages is Rock on Iwate, the official prefectural site. They get great engagement!

For handcuffed pages where you can't comment, like or share, and have no budget, the pointlessness of the page will also be clear from the data. If they want it to be more effective but are bound by their own rules maybe they need to outsource it.(I currently run one page for a town on contract) and CIRs could contribute. Travel to Sendai is an example of such a page.

Me wagging the tail by running an effective page at the town level eventually changed the prefecture page's policies (senior prefectural staff "liked" my page and publicly praised it over their own!) and got them to make a better page, so don't give up yet.

I will also be keeping track of monthly statistics with my pages. I've also been keeping documents of the posts I put on each page, which I think can be helpful.

𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒽𝒾𝓂𝑒 I'm sure your coworkers will help you learn how to make one for your office.
Since arriving I've had my KAKARICHO show me examples for templates and he's checked my documents before I passed them around.

I've paid for my own on Facebook but that's about it.
Sometimes they'll give you free or half price ads to try to lure you in, so you can sometimes use those to your advantage
I direct mine at people from the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand because I'm supposed to be promoting Beppu to more English-speaking countries so I thought I'd start with the big 5

For the rugby world cup promotion vid that I shared, I spent 10 GBP and directed it to the UK, England, N. Ireland, Scotland, Japan, and Oita prefecture, all ages, which increased the reach to 2,469 people, and got 23 clicks on the link. I get the impression it also may have led to it being seen by BBC Wales who got in touch with us at city hall and then came here to film a segment for a programme.

For a more page likes ad I did, I spent 19.99 GBP and targeted Australia, UK, Japan, NZ and US, age 18-50. The ad was for 10 days and it increased the reach to 1461 people and got 7 new page likes

I tend to mostly use it when I have posts about events that I want to promote though, when I used it for the Curry Jamboree event here, I spent 19.00 GBP and that increased the reach to 2,422 and meant I got 117 responses and 16 shares, which helped greatly increase the number of foreigners that came to the event

Leita no problem ^^ yeah, I was really happy to see that so many people came to the event, both foreigners and Japanese people
I think the foreign people that came to that event were mostly people living in the area, we have a very international (50% Japanese students and faculty, 50% international students and faculty) university in Beppu so one of my main goals was to get some of them to come, and many responded to my posts and event tagging their fellow students to tell them about it or get them to go, so that was cool. That uni is up in the mountains (you can see the whole of Beppu and the bay from the campus, that's how far out of town it is) so I wanted to try to get them more involved in city events and it seemed to work ^^

I used my personal account back home, I send money to it every month so I use some of that money to pay for the adverts because that way I can do it online/through PayPal and it's easy
Part of the reason I didn't ask work to pay for the adverts (apart from being too scared of rejection/obvious confusion as to why I'd need to pay for adverts to ask) was because I don't think we have a credit card for city hall either ^^;;

FWIW, I was able to get a (small) budget for paid promotion. We ended up building it into a contract we had with a firm for other marketing but I had control of the expenses (what posts to promote, when we did it). Facebook pages are fundamentally a paid service as that's how FB gets revenue!

Apprently Marudate was one those CIRs!(?) marudate Do you remember how you paid for the boosts/campaign? I.e. if you used a proxy company do you remember what it was called?

And 𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒽𝒾𝓂𝑒 I will ask permission if they mind me giving you their contact information. I also have a budget for paid promotion as of this nendo but I haven't started using it yet. (If we manage to get it going orz) then you could you also use me or my page as an example.

marudate That's cool! Would you be able to give any names for the vendors you outsourced to? Sorry for asking so many questions about this; I'm just feeling a bit lost since we want to start this (for the first time here) within the next couple weeks.

(Also random but I think maybe my placement is near where you were placed as a CIR unless I'm mixed up.)

Making an event is very useful as people can click "going" and get reminded about it. It also shows up in events if people search what's going on. The one time I don't use it is when we are trying to drive ticket sales to an external site, as I don't want people to click going rather than buy an actual ticket!

After making an event I will make a series of posts to promote it as we get closer to the date, and maybe even live pictures from the event if I'm there. As Facebook doesn't show every post to every fan (maybe 20%), you need to post important things multiple times (though perhaps switch up pictures/text to not annoy your loyal fans).